Midnight in the Meadow
Pieces of My Mind #2
Sleep and I were not friends during my teenage years. I preferred the company of the moon with it’s mysterious diffused light casting blue shadows over a familiar world made unfamiliar. The social hum of people would fade to nothingness as the symphony of night creatures filled the forest outside my bedroom’s open window. Leaves crunched beneath the hooves of a lonely buck while a screech owl sang it’s eerie song somewhere in the darkest shadows of that dense forest. Katydids, crickets, and cicadas droned white noise that rose and fell in waves of deafening importance and soothing embrace. I miss those sounds every night I lay down.
I didn’t want to lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, awaiting a new day of school. I wanted to be outside, beneath the gaze of the moon, exploring this new world filled with sounds that disappear like magic with the rising sun. I wasn’t just a night owl; it was my natural state of being. Still is, some twenty-four years later.
One night the urge was so powerful that I put my imagination to work. I laid very still on my bed and closed my eyes. I vividly imagined my body rising off the bed, through the ceiling, until I was dozens of feet above my house, the dark forest, and the night sounds. It was just me and the moon. But where to go from here?
The place I imagined most vividly was Moses Cone Memorial Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s a sprawling expanse of green land filled with meadows and lakes and twisting carriage trails. I set my course and zoomed off in that direction, watching the tiny, dimly lit houses below fade into the distance.
My bare feet were soon swallowed by the lush, wild grass of a meadow where the breeze is always gentle, and the sounds of civilization never intrude. I walked, filling my lungs with chilled night air, listening to rhythm of the creaking pines. Once I had my fill, before the sun’s light revealed my secret journey to the meadow, I found myself sleeping comfortably in my bed.
As and adult, I’ve hiked hundreds of miles in the dark, my path illuminated only by the silvered moon, in snow and ice and the heat of summer. It’s a rare comfort.
A quarter century ago, I chose that particular location for my dream-walk because it’s special to me. Even now, it’s the one place I can envision so vividly that I can almost reach out and touch it. There’s real magic there in those hills and meadows and forests and lakes. It inspires so much of my creative work!
My upcoming comic strip, Breezy Meadow, is chiefly inspired from that particular meadow and my time spent in the national park. I still have some kinks to work out before the comic strip launches. That’s just the nature of these things, and I’d rather sort out any problems now rather than address them mid run.
One major change came in watching a short documentary on Charles Schulz, the creator of the comic strip, Peanuts. In it, he referred to the character Snoopy as “the dog”. Imagine if Snoopy had always been just “the dog”. He wouldn’t be as popular, today. Marketing disaster! However, I chose a similar naming convention for my characters—a cat would be referred to as Cat, and so on!
This was a major oversight that would’ve been impossible to fix after the characters were already established, and yet I was completely blind to it! All this to say that I appreciate you patience while I work tirelessly to rid gremlins from the launch of this massive project. You are awesome.
Speaking of the meadow, Cassandra and I were able to visit it this past weekend. It was chilly but the sun kept us warm. It was a much needed excursion. This area has only grown in popularity since Covid, so we usually have wait for sunset when everyone leaves to find parking. This trip was a rare and much needed exception.
I have a new painting that’s on the verge of being released. It’s a 5”x7” that started life as a simple study. I wanted to test some colors and ideas before applying it to a larger painting, then I simply added more and more until I decided to finish it as its own piece. Funny how that works out, but I’ve learned long ago not to have a death grip on the process. Once completed, I’ll share a small writeup with step-by-step photos along with a link to purchase the framed painting.
I recently finished reading The Curse of the Marquis de Sade by Joel Warner. Wow, what a ride! I can’t recommend this book enough for history nerds. The book tracks the history of Sade’s most infamous work, 120 Days of Sodom, from its conception in the Bastille through modern day. It eventually landed in the hands of a company dealing in historical documents which was found to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Ultimately, the manuscript was returned to France, where it remains today has an important historical artifact.
The company, Aristophil, was founded by a man who saw an end to hand written documents in the modern age, and predicted such documents would only become more valuable. While there has been many fears in the past of technology erasing the work of the human hand—the Gutenberg press, typewriter, and television to name a few—the hand written word persists, and likely always will. However, the book quoted an article from International League of Antiquarian Booksellers that stirred my brain, although not necessarily in the way it may have intended.
“We have progressed from a unique hand-written document, which gives us a clear insight into the author’s creative process, to a sterile, clean printout that can be produced in potentially limitless numbers and that tells us nothing about the author’s creative process.”
I’m horrible about documenting my creative process. All the sketches that go into my work, the rough drafts, the ideas I didn’t choose, get trashed. And I’ve never documented my art journey in journaled words. This quote made me reconsider my actions, and I’ve decided to document my work life. I’ll never be famous, and no one may care what I do. But someone may, in this life or after I’m gone, and the preservation of my traditional skills may be valuable to them. Or at the very least, a distant cousin, God help them, may want to learn more about the inner workings of a relative they never had the opportunity to meet.
I’m unsure of the best way to do this—especially to do it in a way that can be easily preserved and viewed. But I’m working on it and will update you with my progress in the near future.
For my fellow scale modelers, I’ve taken time to clean up my bench so that I can get back to gluing bits of plastic. My work bench was used to wrap Christmas presents, then clutter happened, life got busy—you know. But now we’re back in business!
That wraps up Pieces of My Mind #2. Tell your friends what I’m up to. If you don’t have any friends, tell strangers on the street. Leave cryptic notes strewn about your workplace if need be. The more the merrier!
-Victor